CosmicPrune

A movie doesn't need to challenge the viewer to have merit or be enjoyable. It's quite clear what the arc of most of the characters in this film will be from very early on, but that doesn't detract from it at all. You don't watch Chalet Girl to find a new perspective on life; you watch it because you want to see a good-looking cast deliver some witty lines in some great locations, with the added bonus of some nice snowsports footage.

And that's exactly what you get. Everyone does a decent job here; the characters are likeable (except for the ones who aren't supposed to be), the dialog is amusing, and the cinematography is surprisingly good. The snowboarding scenes work well because the park stunts aren't ridiculously over the top, and the free-riding scenes are well shot and quite inspiring. It's easy to mock the rapid rise of a chalet girl novice to elite snowboarder, but it is actually not that far from the real life story of 2014 Olympic bronze medallist Jenny Jones.

I also appreciated the authenticity of the locations. Almost implausibly, the chalet is perceived as having a cute little gate opening up onto the main piste right next to the main lift station but, in fact, that is exactly how it is in reality. It feels like the production crew pitched up in St Anton and shot everything as it was, rather than trying to manufacture a fake environment with multiple locations and clever camera angles. I watched this film again recently for no other reason than I had just returned from St Anton, and it felt very real.

All in all, this is a great movie to watch if you want to sit on the sofa under a blanket and not think too hard. But be careful, you may end up booking a ski trip afterwards.

When I started my free trial of Apple+ I chose to watch Ted Lasso because my son said it was the "only decent thing on there". After two episodes I certainly wasn't convinced; the premise felt patronising and the characters two-dimensional.

But it didn't take long to pick up and this episode represents its watershed, the series has now developed true depth and all the characters (except perhaps for the excruciating Jamie Tartt) are genuinely relatable. The casting is brilliant, and the appearance of Ellie Taylor as the aptly nicknamed "Sassy" most welcome.

I'd heard Ted Lasso compared to Schitt's Creek and I didn't really get it until now but, just as the Creek's characters rapidly transformed from cardboard archetypes into people you really cared about, the same has happened here. Funny, touching, and ultimately uplifting.

This could have been a riveting and informative movie about a seminal event in British social history, but instead it is a patronising and didactic, one-dimensional portrayal of the class struggle between the salt-of-the-earth proletariat and the cartoonish, entitled gentry in 19th century England. The film spends so long trying to get us invested us in the characters of the poor, downtrodden workers that, even with over two and a half hours of screen time, it apparently doesn't have time to enlighten us about the aftermath of the atrocity. Rory Kinnear puts in a great performance as Henry Hunt, but it would be very nice to have learned what became of him after that fateful day. Sadly it comes over as indulgent, partisan lecturing.